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minor league team." Roger Kahn, The Boys of Summer

naïve

"Woodrow Wilson was naïve to believe Yugoslavia could be formed after World War I." Letter to the Editor, New Yorker, 6/26/99

nascent

"The once nascent Women's National Basketball Association has arrived and is healthy and prosperous." New York Times, 7/17/99

nebulous

"There is a nebulous line between confidence and over-confidence." Editorial, Wall Street Journal, 4/8/99

nefarious

"A nefarious employee can still download secret weapons information to a tape, put it in his pocket and walk out the door." William Safire, "Culture of Arrogance," New York Times, 6/17/99

negligible

"These politicians have voted themselves a big pay raise for the negligible amount of work they do." The Queens Tribune, 8/6/98

nepotism

"Political allies and family members filled government jobs as nepotism flourished." Paul Alter, This Windy City

nettled

"He was pretty well nettled by this time, and he stood in front of a bureau mirror, brushing his hair with a pair of military brushes." James Thurber, "More Alarms at Night"

neurotic

"We shall lose all our power to cope with our problem if we allow ourselves to become a stagnant, neurotic, frightened and suspicious people." Walter Lippmann, "The Nuclear Age"

neutralize

"The quinine that can neutralize his venom is called courage." Elmer Davis, But We Were Born Free

nirvana

"Nirvana is in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem." Kahlil Gilbran, Sand and Foam

noisome

"The noisome conditions in the refugee camps were a disgrace and a danger." Newsday, 8/7/99

nomadic

After buying the big trailer, they spent a nomadic year visiting national parks out west." "On the Road Again,"

Travel Ideas International

nominal

"As the nominal head of his party, the governor was courted by all the Sunday morning talk shows." Archer Karnes, "Politics and Poker"

nondescript

"Jane Austen can picture ordinary, commonplace and nondescript characters in ways denied to me." Walter Scott,

Journal, 1826

nonentity

"With sufficient financial backing, almost any political nonentity could become a national contender." Washington Post, 6/15/98

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Schessel, ''A Chance to Become Really Big," New York Times, 6/15/99

nutritive

"They searched for anything that had nutritive value, but often found nothing." "The Irish Famine," Harpers, 5/73

O

obese

"The rush to lose weight by unproven methods often leads to complications for obese people." Johns Hopkins Health Letter, Summer 1997

obliterate

"They went out to survey the land for a possible railroad, but met with Indians on the warpath and were obliterated." Freeman Tilden, The National Parks [adapted]

obloquy

"Hitler and his Nazis showed how evil a conspiracy could be which was aimed at destroying a race by exposing it to contempt, derision, and obloquy." Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, decision, 10/52

obscure

"This book has serious purpose even if many will find that purpose obscure." Decision of Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, 11/62

obsequious

"and the survivor bound In filial obligation for some term To do obsequious sorrow." William Shakespeare, Hamlet

obsess

"To obsess over acquisitions is especially damaging to human felicity." Llewelyn Powys, Earth Memories

obsolescence

"After five centuries of obsolescence, Roman numerals still exert a peculiar fascination over the inquiring mind." Isaac Asimov, "Nothing Counts"

obviate

"Modest pre-emptive acting can obviate the need for more drastic actions at a later date that could destabilize the economy." Alan Greenspan, quoted in New Jersey Star Ledger, 5/6/99

occult

"Somehow, horror films have changed from one main figure who threatens a town or young women, to occult spirits that take over a normal human for unknown reasons." Pauline Kael, I Lost It at the Movies

octogenarian

"Octogenarian film and stage director Elia Kazan received a mixed reception when he came up to collect his Lifetime Achievement Award." Associated Press report, 4/7/98

ominous

"There was a Sabbath lull in the air, which, in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked ominous." Bret Harte, "The Outcasts of Poker Flat"

omnipotent

"In those comic strips there was always a cruel and omnipotent villain." Letter, New York Times, 9/13/99

omnivorous

"He became an omnivorous reader of the classics." T. S. Lovering, Child Prodigies

opprobrium

"General Sherman is still viewed with opprobrium in these parts of the South he once destroyed." Edmund Wilson,

Patriotic Gore